Friday, November 2, 2012

Ever notice how I seem to go missing around any kind of holiday? It could be, in part, due to my bad habit.

This year for Halloween I was determined to break the procrastination cycle and started on the kids' costumes early. Weeks early. Having increased my sewing skills a bit since I started this blog, I was also determined to use the hot glue gun as little as possible. I searched for inspiration, and in the end decided to make up my own patterns and tutorial.

Things went swimmingly. Until the very end. I was nearly completely done with both costumes - entirely done with the sewing portions - and needed only to add details. But before I added details, I need to spray paint the whole thing so it would be silver.

Perhaps I should stop here and show you what I mean:

Due to Zoe's fun family nickname of "Zo-Bot", we went with robots. I used a mattress pad so that the bodies would be thick and somewhat stiff and also so they'd be warm. (A necessity here in Wisco.) I lined each piece and stuffed it with batting to make it even more sturdy.

But, robots aren't white, as bug pointed out, so the whole lot had to be spray painted silver.

Easy in theory.

But not when you buy the wrong paint on accident. That's right, I sprayed them with enamel paint. Enamel. Which, as you know, takes approximately a millennia to dry on normal surfaces - I don't know if it would EVER dry on fabric! So the costumes I had NOT procrastinated, the ones that were NEARLY FINISHED, the costumes I had been painstakingly working on bit by bit FOR WEEKS, were RUINED. Ruined.

With three days to go before our church Halloween party, I hastily collected more supplies and threw myself and my house into a whirlwind of costume making - much like what it is like under NORMAL circumstances, you know, when I DON'T plan ahead. Fortunately, I got it all done in time, but not without neglecting just about everything and everyone.

I do actually have some tutorials for how you can create your own robots, but they didn't quite make it to written form in time for Halloween. I also wrote up a cute little Halloween Round Up for you, but again, didn't get it quite completed in time. And since I'm pretty sure everyone's totally OVER Halloween at this point, I'll spare you that until next year and leave you with only these photos. (Now you have something to look forward to next October! Besides Halloween, that is.)

All in all, it was a successful costume making/trick-or-treating Halloween season. Phew. But, in case you were wondering, that's where I've been lately.

Also, add to that flurry of crazy activity the fact that mr left once more to work in Vietnam for about two weeks, and you've got one crafter/blogger with a little problem.

Please help. All suggestions welcome. How do you get your "crafty mojo" back??

*Be sure to check the right sidebar for all the fun parties I link to!

1 comment:

Arrgh, what a dreadful story! And after you had made the costumes ahead of time and everything! The littles looked AMAZING, so you overcame. Great job!!! Looks like some super fun trick-or-treating, too.

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